Chapter 7 - THE GHOST IN THE VISITOR’S BOOTHTwo weeks later, the snow in Colorado had turned to slush, but inside the maximum-security federal holding facility outside Denver, the air was perpetually cold, sterile, and smelled of industrial disinfectant.
I sat on one side of thick, reinforced ballistic glass, my hands resting calmly on the steel counter.
The heavy metal door across the room groaned open. Two guards escorted a man in a bright orange jumpsuit toward the visitation booth.
It took me a few seconds to recognize him.
Daniel Reynolds looked ten years older. The arrogant posture, the immaculate hair, the crisp colonel’s uniform—all gone. His shoulders were hunched, his skin sallow, and his eyes hollowed out by the crushing reality of a disgraced life sentence. He had lost his career, his fiancée, his social standing, and his freedom.
The guards shoved him into the metal chair opposite mine. He picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with trembling hands. Slowly, I lifted mine.
"Kesha," his voice cracked through the static of the speaker box. It sounded pathetic, thin, and broken. "I didn't think... I never thought you’d actually come here."
"I didn't come to gloat, Daniel," I said steadily, my voice calm and completely detached. "I came to deliver a message."
He stared at me through the glass, tears pooling in the corners of his bloodshot eyes. "I’m sorry. God, Kesha... I was a coward. I listened to my mother. I let ambition blind me. If I could take it all back—"
"You can't," I interrupted, cutting him off cleanly. "You made your choice eight years ago when you walked out of that apartment and let your mother erase my children. You chose a title over a family. And now you get to live with the consequences."
Daniel pressed his palm against the glass, as if trying to reach across the divide. "The kids... how are they? Can I... can I write to them? Just once?"
I looked at him for a long, silent moment. I saw no malice left in him—only the wretched, hollow shell of a man who had traded everything real for a ghost of power.
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"No, Daniel," I said firmly, hanging up the receiver with a sharp click that echoed in the tiny booth. "You lost that privilege the day you stopped believing they existed."
I stood up, adjusted my jacket, and turned my back on him without a backward glance.
